


Rest

by mightyscrub



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Fluff, M/M, marriage of sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 21:38:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7285690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightyscrub/pseuds/mightyscrub
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post MGS4.  Snake "proposes" to Otacon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rest

Dave wakes up very early, but up north like this the sun’s been out for days and it’s already white lines on the hems of the bedroom curtains. He still doesn’t experience much in terms of bleariness—when he wakes up, he wakes up completely—but these days he has embraced the pleasures of lying awake for long spells in the morning, blinking slowly at the room.

He rolls over gingerly, and there’s Hal on the other side of the bed, right where he should be, his bare back facing Dave above the comforter. Dave thinks maybe of kissing him, but it’s too early to wake Hal up, so instead he leans on his elbow and watches his sleeping face, half obscured by hair. He’s curled around a novel and his glasses. Dave leans over creakingly to move the glasses to the bedside table, or else Hal will never find them later in sheets and grogginess.

Hal has aged too, certainly not with the drama of Dave’s condition, but there are lines along his face, about his eyes and mouth. They’re surprising in their familiarity.

Dave gets up. The trip to the bathroom is slow going because his body doesn’t like being alive these days, particularly not after just waking up, but as always Dave adamantly ignores his joints’ protests and does his damn business.

The absence of emotional tension is still somewhat surreal. He and Hal and Sunny lived so long with it and with Dave’s anger that even now that it has all dimmed to quiet living, the memory if it sometimes creeps into empty moments of Dave’s thoughts, like now as he’s brushing his teeth. Things they said to each other without meaning. Things they did. Does it really not matter anymore?

… Maybe if Dave was a younger man he would dwell on it and make it matter, but not so much now. Now he’s content with quiet. Now he doesn’t question things when they’re good.

He heaves his way downstairs, also slow going as his body clings to sleep, and raises his eyebrows to find Sunny in the kitchen, already over the stove and fully decked out in her apron.

“You’re up early,” he says, as he takes a seat at their little kitchen table.

She smiles at him, a big sort of smile that had disappeared for a long time but recently returned. “I had to get up earlier than you if I was gonna make you breakfast.”

While the eggs are cooking, her little timer perched on the counter, she brings him a stack of various newspapers and he starts reading them. It’s a filtered look at how the world is doing, but it’s enough for breakfast. She brings him a mug of coffee too, a faded mug from a gift shop in Rock Springs, Wyoming that originally had some sort of joke attached to it when Philanthropy was young but Dave and Hal both have forgotten what that was now.

“Thanks, Sunny.”

“You’re welcome, Dave!” She’s started calling him that now, perhaps picking up on Hal also calling him by name rather than codename again. She’s also dropped the ‘Uncle’ in addressing Hal and they’re not sure why that is. Knowing Sunny, it could very well be to make their names match. She likes things organized.

She feeds him eggs and toast with generous shakes of cinnamon over the butter. She has mastered both of these breakfasts, but makes them so often that they’re a little nauseating. He picks at them heroically, while she wolfs down her share.

In between articles, he asks her if she slept well, if she had any dreams, lazy morning talk, and she keeps smiling that perfect smile at him, he can’t seem to stop looking at it, and then eventually a very sleepy Hal appears, and Sunny starts eggs and cinnamon toast round two.

“Thanks, Sunny,” Hal says between a yawn when Sunny hands him his coffee, unconsciously mirroring Dave.

“You’re welcome, Hal!”

Hal smiles at the Rock Springs mug in Dave’s hand blurrily.

Then they’re all sitting at the table together, Hal too tired to even notice how much he hates eggs by now. Dave still has a newspaper on his knee but isn’t reading it anymore.

Somewhere in the conversation, Sunny asks a very interesting question.

“Shouldn’t you guys have rings?”

A bit of egg slides off Hal’s fork. “Rings?” Hal repeats.

“Yeah.” She mimes a wedding ring on her finger. “I’ve been thinking about that… It’s been so long, but you don’t have rings.”

She’s smiling still, but behind it Dave can see an inkling of the adult she’ll be some day. He wishes briefly he could meet that person.

“Uh well… I guess we never felt like we needed them,” Hal says, looking at Dave. Deferring to the dying man. Makes sense.

“It was never particularly possible, with the way we lived,” Dave explains.

“But it’s possible now,” says Sunny.

She has them trapped, she knows it, and Dave smiles at her.

“… Now that you mention it, it would be nice.” He turns to Hal. “Right?”

Poor Hal is still not fully awake and looks very alarmed in a way that’s trying hard to look casual. “Yeah. That would be pretty nice.”

“I like it when you’re happy,” Sunny tells them somewhat cryptically. Her smile is warm and she takes their plates to the sink, leaving behind the two half-full coffee mugs.

“I’m gonna catch Pokemon,” she adds, clearly her reward for being such a gracious host to her caretakers, and she hums to herself as she shuffles out of the room for her Gameboy. It’s a bright and happy song. Dave missed her being bright and happy.

She always seems to want to bless them with these small gifts, and Dave has learned finally to accept them without questioning how much he deserves them.

That’s what having the love of a daughter is like, probably.

x

“Were you being serious?” Hal asks him later, when they’re still alone at the table and the coffee is long gone.

It’s probably a side effect of living together for so long that Dave knows immediately what he’s talking about.

Dave shrugs a shoulder. “Might be nice for my skeleton to have a wedding ring on it.”

“That’s pretty morbid, Dave,” Hal chastises.

They’re able to joke about it these days, but every so often Dave goes too far, and that’s why he’s watching Hal closely at the moment.

“Would it help you?” Dave asks.

Hal’s frown, previously small and somewhat in jest, deepens. “What do you mean?”

“I guess a ring would be something to remember me by.”

“I don’t need a ring to remember you,” Hal says softly.

“But would it help you?”

Hal gets it now, and his hands fold slowly on his knee pulled up on the chair, his chin coming to rest on them. His glasses are low on his nose.

“…I don’t know. I guess it would make me feel pretty good, to have that.” He puffs out a little hollow laugh, but his expression is warm.

“Remember that I loved you?”

“Yeah…” Another little puff of a laugh, but then Hal presses his forehead to his knee, hiding his face, and Dave gives him a minute.

“It would be nice not to be buried alone,” Dave says, careful, turning the words to examine their surfaces before letting them fall out of his mouth. “I don’t regret anything. It’s not about regret or what could have been. It’s about…” Unbidden, he thinks of Big Boss’ final moments, his words. “If I’m going to die as a man rather than a legend, I want to be connected to the people who loved me that way. You. Sunny. Maybe I’m the one who wants that reminder in there with me.”

Hal sniffs, then lets the air out of his lungs on a shakily determined sort of exhale, a “hoo”, steadying himself.

“…You sure it’s me you want to leave with something like that?”

Dave snorts. “You’re asking that _now_?”

Hal laughs too, in a cracking way, and raises his face, swiping under his glasses. “You’re right.”

That question’s about nine years irrelevant by now.

Dave stands, his knees cracking, and takes their empty coffee mugs to the sink.

“So you want me to whip up some documents while we’re at it?” Hal asks.

“Why the hell not,” says Dave.

He starts the dishes and Hal comes to dry them, their shoulders comfortably brushing. Hal cries quietly, sniffing or laughing self-deprecatingly every so often, and once the dishes are done and his hands are finally dry, Dave wraps Hal up in his arms and kisses him soundly.

“Thank you,” Dave tells him.

Hal shakes his head, and they’ve already said everything a thousand times, all the thanks and the apologies and the meanings, so he just cups Dave’s face and looks at him with a bleary sort of gratitude and affection, and that’s enough.

x

Two weeks later, thanks to Hal’s efficiency, Dave finds himself lounging in the bathtub and watching the ring on his finger thoughtfully, trying to etch each droplet of water on the gold to memory. It’s a simple band—they both are—and there was an option to engrave something on the inner rim, which Hal visibly fussed over before asking ‘well what’s mine gonna say, Dave?’

‘I love you,’ Dave said immediately. Hal laughed at the dumb simplicity of that, they both laughed, but Hal wound up choosing that for Dave’s as well.

Now, Dave imagines he can feel those etched-in words pressed against his skin. He would look at them more often, except that means taking off the ring, and for the most part he prefers simply knowing they are there, a silent fact snug under his knuckle.

The water’s gone tepid. Hal is sitting beside him, using the lid-down toilet as a chair, and idly running his fingers through Dave’s wet hair. Dave sometimes gets very weak now, and about a month ago he nearly drowned himself falling asleep in the tub, scared the living shit out of Hal, so Hal has taken to hovering like this these days. It’s alright, because half the time Dave can use some help up anyway.

For a moment Dave closes his eyes and concentrates on Hal’s presence beside him. Hal’s ring taps his scalp on Hal’s finger.

It’s getting late probably, but that’s a distant thought. Dying has made him care so much less about things like that. He’s in less of a hurry than he’s ever been.

“Dave?”

He’s noticed sometimes Hal gets antsy if he’s still for too long.

Dave opens his eyes and smiles at him. Hal smiles back.

“What?” Hal asks, not even knowing what they’re smiling about but so easily swayed.

“I was just thinking of all the instances when my past self would have been appalled to know I would marry you.”

Hal laughs. “And you quit smoking too. Poor Solid Snake.”

He leans forward to press a kiss to Dave’s forehead and Dave slips a hand around the back of his neck to hold him in place and make that a kiss between lips. Hal makes a half-laugh of a noise in protest at nearly being dragged into the tub fully clothed, but manages to steady himself on the tub’s rim and kiss Dave earnestly.

Earnestly but slow. Everything is slow these days and better for it, long days of savoring.

“I’ll miss you,” Hal says against his lips, somehow says it with a smile.

“I think the ‘until death do us part’ bit is a load of bullshit,” Dave says wisely.

Hal kisses him deeply as the water slowly goes cold.

x


End file.
